


last dream before sunrise

by poetatertot



Series: dreaming on fire [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dream Meetings, M/M, Mentions of Apocalypse - Freeform, hello rooftop cliche my old friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetatertot/pseuds/poetatertot
Summary: The ocean is a dead-end. Neil knows this, so why can’t he stop himself from moving towards it? If he was really smart—if he really was following his mother’s promise—he would take the first bus he could get to somewhere on the East Coast. Somewhere nondescript, like North Carolina.It doesn’t matter, Neil thinks.The world is ending anyway.Or,Neil meets the boy of his dreams.





	last dream before sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> Two things about this fic: 
> 
> 1) Neil's story is set as a prequel to my other, jerejean fic [dreams of being golden](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850593/chapters/34377890) though you don't need it at all to read this one. I just like writing about Andrew. 
> 
> 2) I put Millport in the valley of southern California because the land here is perpetually in a state of post-apocalyptic bleakness. Neil's mom dies in Las Vegas instead.

The first time Neil dreams, he sees a place he’s never been to.

The skyline of the city glows—a vivid, blazing sunset pouring gold and fire onto blacktop and into windows like molten lava. He blinks away black spots in his vision to take in the odd shamble of low roofs and power lines.

He knows immediately that this is not home.

One other person stands on the rooftop, facing away from him to stare out over the scenery. Light bleeds through blonde hair and hugs the square line of broad shoulders, glancing off crossed arms and black-on-black-on-black. Neil opens his mouth to speak—and stops.

Beyond the blonde boy is an apocalypse.

A black spot forming in the center of the sunset expands like a splotch of ink, spreading and spreading until it swallows the jeweled sea and eats the sky whole. The warmth of the world extinguishes itself in an instant—a black tsunami is coming straight for them.

The words in Neil’s mouth are acid and ash, dust on his tongue. The cloying salt on the air chokes him, filling his eyes with tears he hates and his nose with an awful burning he can’t rub away. He chokes on alien syllables— _he doesn’t know anyone with that name_ —and struggles to breathe.

The boy turns around.

Broad nose, a solid jaw. Eyes as dark as brows, almost as dark as the oncoming water.  He stares at Neil— _into him, through him_ —and never moves.

The black wave descends on their rooftop, and the boy never looks away.

 

Neil opens his eyes to screaming.

It isn’t his own—a plus in his book. It also doesn’t sound like anyone he knows. He stares up at the watery, grey sky and listens to hoarse syllables crash over one another for several seconds. Then he sits up.

Millport’s community park wasn’t his first choice to rest by a long shot. The wet grass and gnarled oaks, while pretty enough on their own, don’t provide nearly enough protection from the open. It had taken him fifteen minutes too long to find the right bench the night before—somewhere hidden from the road but not far back enough that the other homeless would think they could get the jump on him. He’d settled for a rickety thing tucked between two thorny bushes and conked out the first chance he could get.

Now his bones rattle under his skin, stiff with an ache he can’t seem to get rid of these days. He pops every knuckle in his hands and then the joints of his legs. A roll of his head releases the tightness in his neck all at once with dull crunches. His spine tightens and relaxes nicely with an audible _crack._

He can’t for the life of him remember what he was dreaming about—another constant in life after his mother’s death. He doesn’t know if he should be grateful or not. All it does is fill him with dread when he wakes, an extra itch he’ll never be able to scratch.

Neil watches his breath cloud out around his face for a moment, breathing in the cold morning, then takes a catalog of his peripherals.

Today’s wake up call is an argument between two other homeless people. They’re just far enough away that he can’t quite make out their words, but he doesn’t really need to—the way they shove each other, red-faced and sweaty even though the sun’s barely risen, tells him all he needs to know. He can see spit flying from their mouths from where he sits; the way their limbs fly about, threatening to fall but never quite making it, only makes him even more tired.

It isn’t his problem. Things these days rarely are. His mother’s death, burned to ashes back in Nevada, seems to work more like a good-luck charm than a curse; Neil hasn’t run into any of his father’s men since Las Vegas, barely has had so much as an argument with someone trying to take his sandwich. The road trip to California’s coast is one he’s made in utter peace and silence. He hates it.

The ocean is a dead-end. Neil knows this, so why can’t he stop himself from moving towards it? The sea can’t offer him safety from his demons; all it knows is how to drown. If Neil is really smart—if he really was following his mother’s promise—he would take the first bus he can get to somewhere on the East Coast. Somewhere nondescript, like North Carolina.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ Neil thinks. He slings his duffel bag over one shoulder and stands, stretching out his legs. _The world is ending anyway._

The apocalypse is all anybody can talk about these days. No matter the city, the state, the country, all the headlines look the same: burning buildings and polluted skies, the last glaciers melting into salty warm water, the dying and waiting to die caught in sensational snapshots of agony. The world is falling apart like an overturned anthill, exposing humanity’s ugly insides to the sun, and Neil is just one insect trying not to get stepped on.

There’s no point to running anymore, so why is he still going? The question hangs like his own personal noose across twenty-two countries and a whole ocean, over the span of eight miserable years, down the I-15 all the way into Millport’s leafy little park.

Maybe some habits are just too deep-rooted to break.

“Hey, kid!”

Neil looks up. Someone is making their way across the grass towards him—somebody decidedly _not_ homeless, if their nice clothes and jingling car keys are anything to go by. Neil lets himself to carefully still at the sight of him, feigning calm while he takes note of all the possible directions to make a run for it. The man comes up short a few feet away and gives him a shrewd look.

“You’re really on your own, huh.” It isn’t a question, so Neil doesn’t give an answer. The man gestures to the duffel bag slung under his arm. “Is that for show or what?”

It’s a moment before Neil realizes he’s pointing to the tiny logo on the side—Exites’ logo. Neil looks up properly, chancing a glance into his eyes. The man stares back intently.

“What?” Neil asks.

“Your bag,” the man says impatiently. He gestures again. “You play, don’t you? People don’t just pick up bags like that anywhere. And don’t,” he continues, seeing Neil’s mouth open, “lie to me about it. I saw you watching the game through the window yesterday.”

Of course. In a town barely big enough to justify more than two gas stations, Neil had been singled out for stopping by one of them. He only wanted to buy something quick—a bag of chips, so he wouldn’t go to bed _too_ hungry—but the cashier’s TV had been playing the semifinals and Neil hadn’t been near a live game in what felt like forever. He hadn’t thought he’d stopped to watch for _that_ long, but it must have been just enough to tick this guy off.

A beginner’s mistake. If his mother was still alive she would have hit him for dawdling.

“Calm down,” the man says. “I’m not around to tattle on you. I just wanted to let you know that David’s one short for a team.” He pauses, squinting at Neil. “What position do you play?”

Neil swallows. He can hear his mother screaming in his head, her nails digging into his cheek as she slaps him for wishing out loud. _There’s nothing for you there,_ she always said. _Do you want to die? Don’t be stupid, Neil._

But he _aches_ —even now at the end of the world, homeless and aimless, he aches for the sport. It’s all he’s found joy in. Exy is the only thing that’s ever given without taking away, the only thing that gave him focus over years of trying not to die.

Maybe Neil’s just too stupid to keep himself alive, but it isn’t like there’s anything left to lose now, is there? It’s just him and his bag and a road that goes in circles. His mother is dead, his father is in prison—there’s nothing out here that can touch him but the sky.

He hasn’t played exy in almost a decade but it doesn’t matter. The memory of who he was on the court is clear as if it were yesterday.

“Backliner,” he whispers.

“That’s fine,” the man says. “Here, I’ll give you his card. Just let him know I sent you.”

The man fishes a piece of paper out of his wallet and holds it out for Neil to take. He steps forward and takes it with numb fingers, eyeing a name above a phone number and email.

_David Wymack._

The card takes him up the hill from the park and halfway across town to a cluster of old white business flats. Half the windows are boarded up—echoes of a craze a few years back, when an asteroid almost hit the earth. Neil picks his way across a street lined with trash and knocks on the third door like the card says to. His mother’s voice hovers in his peripheral like a mosquito that threatens to bite him at every second. _Stupid, suicidal, should have left the second that man tried to talk to you._

The silence between him knocking and the door opening is almost long enough to convince him nobody’s home. Almost.

“I fucking told you maggots—what the hell?”

A man cracks open the door far enough for Neil to catch a glimpse of a beaten couch and scattered trash. He looks almost as haggard as Neil feels, with shadows under his eyes and a sloppy tank that shows off tribal tattoos.

“Who are you?” The man—Wymack, if the card was right—squints down at Neil, taking in his bedraggled form and the beat-up bag over his shoulder. One hand clenches around a doorknob Neil can’t see and twists it until it clicks. “Did Hernandez send you?”

“Maybe.” He never caught the man’s name.

Wymack frowns. He doesn’t say anything for a while, eyes boring into Neil’s face like he expects more out of him. Neil focuses on a point beside Wymack’s shoulder and waits for the silence to pass.

“What position?”

“Backliner,” Neil says. It comes out easier the second time around.

Wymack cracks his neck and purses his lips. Neil waits.

“Okay,” Wymack finally says. He stands back and opens the door further to jab a thumb behind him. “Come in.”

The office is just as run-down as it looked on first glance. Papers and trash cover nearly every surface and spill onto the stained carpet; Neil steps on at least three things in his effort to find a clear spot to stand next to the box TV. Wymack moves past him to a desk covered in random shit and knocks back half a Red Bull.

“You’re in luck,” he says. “I’ve been looking for another player since June. Nobody wants to sign on anymore—I think you can guess why.”

Of course. At the end of the world, the only people willing to make contracts and dedicate their lives are the ones with nothing else to live for. Neil nods silently.

“I can’t just tell the others they’re shit out of luck,” Wymack tells him. “Not when it’s the only thing they’ve got on the table. We’ve been making it work without a tenth player for this long, but if I’m going to sign you on, I need to know you’ll stick around. You understand?”

They wouldn’t be having this conversation if Neil had anywhere left to go, but he doesn’t say that. He nods again. “Yes sir.”  
  
“Coach,” Wymack corrects him. “You got any family around here, kid?”

If there was, Neil would have died in his sleep already. “No.”  
  
“Cuts out a couple steps for me.” Wymack goes back to rummaging through his things. He rips out a small packet and holds it up to the light. “Here we go.”

There’s a whole lot of jargon that Neil doesn’t bother reading. The packet goes over regulations that would mean something if the planet wasn’t ready to fall apart like a house of cards; Neil ignores it all, taking the proffered pen and signing his name in all the blank spots without even blinking. Wymack stares at him and he holds the packet out, fingers barely trembling.

“You sure you aren’t fucking with me?”

Neil stares at the paw watermark on the packet’s cover page and swallows. “No.”

Wymack squints at him for a long moment. He takes one look at the packet and rolls it up to jam into his back pocket like a newspaper. “In that case,” he says, “you’d better meet them, Neil.”

The apartment complex isn’t very far from the office. Neil is already used to walking—he’s walked thousands of miles over ground that wasn’t made for it—so the couple blocks in midday heat do nothing but remind him of his aches, coating his temple and nape in a gentle sweat. Wymack walks ahead of him and complains about how hot it is like global warming hasn’t been a thing for the past three decades. Neil doesn’t say anything at all.

Millport, for all of its small-town feel, suffers the same fate of greater cities in the wake of the apocalypse. The neighborhoods are all as run-down and boarded up as Wymack’s corner, buildings flaking paint and dust like old skin, light post flyers with vivid ink washed away littering the gutters. There are hints here and there of the town’s inhabitants—a laundry line here, the faint crackle of somebody’s radio there—but the heat is oppressive enough to keep everyone indoors.     

Wymack comes to a stop in front of a building orange enough to make Neil squint. The lines of ferns around the bottom floor have long withered and died, but he can catch glimpses of greenery in an inner courtyard. Wymack pulls out a key and unlocks the front gate.

“You can have Seth’s old copy if you decide to stay,” he tells Neil. “Come in and take a look, would you?”

The inner courtyard is small. Neil counts four apartments on the lower floor, two on either side, and one across a small plot of ferns and palms. Obscene orange is everywhere, even more vivid where the sun hasn’t bleached it away, and white trims gleams above a concrete pathway that’s been kept clean. The doors of all but one apartment are swung in to expose screen and dark interiors.

A line of laundry runs above their heads on the top floor from one corner to the opposite; jerseys and odd clothes hang from it, twitching in the whisper of wind. Somewhere, heavy EDM is thrumming low enough to tickle Neil’s jaw. He can hear someone laughing.

Neil blinks. Beside him, Wymack heaves out a sigh.

“Hold on a minute,” he says before turning to the closest door and banging on the screen with his fist. Immediately, the laughter inside dies down. “Get out here,” he snaps, “and bring the others, would you?”

“Aye aye captain,” someone chirps loudly. Wymack stands back from the screen with an unimpressed look.

There’s scuffling, the shuffle of sandals on tile and bodies moving, and Neil bites back the urge to make himself smaller as the screen opens and spills out a jumble of bodies. They shove and nudge at each other—some more violent than others—before one catches Neil’s eye. His mouth pops open into a perfect _o._

“A new one, Coach? Where’d you find him?” Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, the boy purses his lips and gives Neil an obvious once-over. He stiffens automatically. “And why couldn’t we have gotten him sooner?”  

“Ask him yourself, Nicky,” one of two blonde twins snipes. He crosses his arms and glares at Neil as if he’s offending him just by breathing. The other twin doesn’t even appear to be listening; he’s only got eyes for the tallest boy, a lanky thing who frowns at Neil but says nothing.

“The others,” Wymack reminds them. Nicky nods and shuffles backwards to go bang on other doors.

It takes only a couple minutes of yelling and shuffling for the upper level to fill. Neil takes a step back towards the entrance and counts heads. _Eight._

Wymack squints up at them all. “You gonna come down or what?”

“We’ve got a pool going,” a tall guy with spiked hair says. “I’m fifteen bucks in, Coach. _Fifteen._ ”  
  
“That’s your deal,” he says flatly. “Get your asses down here.”

The eight of them are the oddest jumble of a team—because that _is_ who they are, Neil assumes—that he’s ever seen. There’s a blonde dressed like she belongs in a timeline three catastrophes back, and another girl with pastel hair like an Easter basket, and a third who stands square and severe like a female Atlas. Neil can see the invisible divide between them as they all crowd in front of him, bright smiles and easy stances of half the team at odds with the first cluster of players. The only constant is physical presence; every single one eyes him acutely, muscles defined under clothes that betray the life they’ve made for themselves.

_At the end of the world, the only ones who stick around have nothing else to live for._

“Coach,” one of the girls finally says. “Who’s this?”

“Neil,” Wymack says. Like that answers everything.

The blonde girl’s mouth thins until it threatens to tear. Beside her, the quieter twin blinks slowly, eyes flicking once to Neil and away into nothing. Nicky cocks his head to the side.

“So, is he taking Seth’s place, or—” Nicky cuts off at a sharp look from several others. “Okay, okay. I won’t ask.”

“Too late,” somebody mutters. They fall into an uncomfortable silence.

Wymack heaves another sigh and adjusts his ballcap. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re all living on borrowed time. We can’t sit around forever—we needed new meat. He’s here now. If you’ve got a problem, speak now.” He looks each member in the face carefully and nods at whatever he sees. “Matt, he’s rooming with you.”

The spikey-haired guy shifts in place. “Alright.”

There’s an unspoken dismissal. Wymack leaves Neil for the lone apartment on the bottom floor that wasn’t disturbed; the other members dissipate back to their respective places. Nicky hovers uncertainly at the door to his apartment, looking back, but a sharp word from someone inside drags him away.

Then it’s just Neil, Matt, and Dan, who turns out to also be Matt’s girlfriend. They’re nice enough people compared to the company he’s kept for the past eight years of his life—that is, nicer than people trying to flay his back open and then some. Neil follows them to the second floor and down one to where they came out of. _203._

The apartment is oddly cluttered for having only one person living in it. Neil does his best not to trip on the crowd of shoes in the doorway and steps into where he supposes he’ll be living indefinitely. There’s a living room full of CD racks and posters, a small kitchenette, and a single bathroom with one of the smallest showers he’s ever seen. There’s also only one bedroom, too small for two to be comfy but still bigger than anything Neil’s had in too long. A skylight lets in afternoon sun

He stares at the emptier half of the room. There’s skeleton furniture—a bed frame and mattress, a desk, and an empty bookcase—all crammed together, the bedroom’s skylight illuminating a thick layer of dust.

 _No point in cleaning up for a dead man_ , Neil thinks. He hopes the desk drawers aren’t full of spiders.

“It’s not much,” Matt says, “but it’s what we’ve got.”

Neil doesn’t mention that _not much_ is more than he’s had in years. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

“Or don’t,” Matt suggests. He smiles at Neil with an openness he almost envies. “We usually have a movie night on Saturdays. If you stick around you might even get first pick.”

“I’ll pass this time,” Neil says. “Thanks.”

Dan and Matt leave him to move in, which is really just Neil figuring out the best spot to stuff his things. There’s plenty of room in the bathroom cabinet for his toiletries, and the sparse clothes he owns can all fit in one dresser drawer. There isn’t nearly enough padding to hide his money and special contacts folder though, so Neil settles for wedging the packet behind the desk and praying Matt won’t come in to rifle through his things.

A small list of things he needs forms in his mind. Sheets, a few food items. Does Millport even have a functioning market still? He retraces his steps back to the livingroom to ask.

Dan and Matt exchange a look. “Yeah,” Dan says. “There is. But don’t you want someone to go with you?”  
  
“I’ll be fine.”

“With just one bag?”

Neil shrugs, hiking his now-empty duffel a little higher. “Just tell me where it is.”

“It’s across six blocks north, in the shopping center. You can’t miss it.”

 _No_ , Neil thinks, remembering how painfully small Millport felt on just the walk from the park to Wymack’s office. _I don’t think I could._

He leaves the apartment and makes his way down to the first level. The afternoon sun reflecting off the walls turns everything golden, filling the courtyard with a warm glow that soothes the ache in his bones. The faintest of breezes ripples through the center cluster of palms, twitching them this way and that to cast odd flickering shadows over the pathways. Neil blinks away sunspots from his vision.

Maybe it was too soon to tell, but there were worse places to die.

.

When he thinks back on it, all the dreams must have begun with Millport. The bone-deep ache of living on the run was enough to chase away anything sweet he could have found in sleep; his restlessness, his ever-present fear at being accosted when his eyes closed, were solid deterrents to things like REM. There was no time to dream when the world was falling into chaos.

Until there was.

Neil startles awake. His whole body tingles with aftershocks of something unnameable, a prickling akin to numbness that seizes all of his limbs. He feels flushed, feverish, his new sheets sticking to his skin. He kicks them off and lays there struggling to control his breathing.

What did he dream about? He can’t remember, but the aftermath of it paints his skin in fading shades of orange and red, brown eyes that pinned him down and swallowed him whole. Neil places one hand over his neck and feels the frantic thrum of his pulse. He’s wide awake now.

The bedroom is completely dark save for the watery moonlight leaking through the skylight. Neil trains his eyes on swirling motes of dust suspended in silver and counts to ten in every language he knows. Then he gets up.

He steps out onto the walkway and quietly shuts the door behind him. Every apartment in the courtyard is properly shut now, locks set in the absence of the sun. Neil leans out against the railing and sucks in a deep breath. The night air isn’t quite cold with summer coming, just cool enough to prickle goosebumps under his sleepshirt. It’s cleansing.

The Foxes are—something. He came back after an hour out and found Dan and the other older residents hovering at their doorways, eyes trained on the entrance gate. The sight of him turned most of them away, but Dan caught his eye and gave him a smile.  It doesn’t occur to him until later, when he’s wolfed down a microwave burrito and retired to bed early, that they’d been making sure he would come back at all.

Then, before he could fall asleep, the yelling had started. Matt didn’t even flinch, brushing his teeth calmly, but Neil sat up so fast he thought he might be sick.

“It’s nothing,” Matt said. “The monsters are always fighting about something.”

It didn’t sound like nothing—there was the unmistakable crashes of thrown objects, angry low voices crashing over one another like stones—but the sounds died out after around ten minutes. Matt crawled into bed and promptly began snoring like a train.

There’s nothing but silence, now. Neil leans against the railing and peeks up at the stars. They’re especially bright tonight.

“Couldn’t sleep?”    

He spins around. The shadows cast by the overhanging ledge turn the girl’s face— _Renee_ , Dan had called her—to shadows, her smile an odd, crooked line in the dark. Neil mistrusts her almost immediately; the scraps of fire he’s seen in the other residents is buried so deep in her that it’s almost indiscernible, but it’s _there._ She’s a wild card with her motives buried in ash, and he won’t be alone with her if he can help it.

Still, the idea of returning back into the dark oppression of his bedroom claws at Neil’s throat. He can’t go back in just yet.

“No,” he says, stepping back from the railing. “Not quite.”

He doesn’t ask why Renee is up, and she doesn’t offer up the information.

“The night is good for finding peace,” she says instead, easing herself into the space at his right. She’s careful to leave a wide gap between them. “Some things that seem too bright during the day are easier to approach in the dark. Don’t you agree?”

Words of someone who knows better than to favor exposure. Neil half-shrugs.

Renee’s smile never shifts. She stares out at the courtyard with a serene expression, eyelids almost half-mast in the cool breeze. Silence stretches between them, a stillness almost as painful as the dark itself, and Neil can’t help but twitch just a little. He can feel anxiety singing through his bones, a twin ache that urges him to run as far as he can.

As if sensing his distress, Renee pushes off the railing and begins to widen the gap. She nods to the rooftops and their tiny glass skylights—cutouts that clearly reflect the moon like patchwork, glinting the reflection of someone’s cigarette smoke into the open air.  
“It’s even better up there,” she says softly, and then, “goodnight, Neil.”

He watches her drift back down the hallway and slip inside _205_ like a ghost. Then, he makes his way in the opposite direction.

It doesn’t take much effort to climb up the railing where it meets the staircase and hook his fingers into the gutter, hoisting himself up onto the roof. The rooftop is flat and white, an open space large enough for probably all of them to stretch out and stare at the sky. A lone figure stands at the edge, looking out at the jumble of Millport’s neighborhood with a cigarette perched between two fingers. One of the twins.

Neil holds himself very still. The twin doesn’t look back.

 _Aaron and Andrew,_ Matt had called them. _Aaron’s mostly harmless—all bark and no bite—but Andrew is.._ He’d paused then, frowning, and shook his head. _If you hang around long enough you’ll be able to tell the difference pretty easily._

There’s a violence to the way the blonde stands, posture square and tense as if considering throwing himself off the edge. One hand curls and uncurls at his side, knuckle bones threatening to knife right through flesh, and as Neil approaches, he watches those fingertips twitch and go utterly still.

 _Andrew_ , he thinks, and the syllables plunk through his brain like stones into the sea.

Neil knows better than to come close. He leaves a healthy distance between them to take in the rigidity of Andrew’s silhouette against the stars, the low skyline that feels familiar, even painfully nostalgic somehow. His stomach swoops without him knowing quite why.

The acrid burn of smoke makes its way backwards with the breeze and rifts its way over Neil’s skin. He sucks it in easy as breathing, taking comfort in the scent of his mother’s vice. His heart begins to slow into a steady, sleepy tick.

Andrew never bothers to look over his shoulder. He takes drag after drag until the cigarette is nothing but a stub between two fingers before crushing it under one foot. Then, with nothing to keep his hands busy, he pauses, cocking his head to one side, before finally, slowly, turning to meet Neil’s gaze.

A chill runs down Neil’s spine. The violence of Andrew’s posture is all wrong with eyes that cold; it’s as if someone cut them out of another person’s face and pasted them into Andrew’s skull. He’s never looked Andrew in the face before, but he knows, intrinsically, that something about this is very, very wrong.

Embers on the surface, ash underneath.

Neil swallows. Andrew’s eyes never shift from his own. Under the moon they’re twin holes in his face, black enough to swallow the sky, but Neil has a feeling— _more than a feeling, a knowing, bone-deep_ —that if they were in the light, his eyes would be earthy-brown. The certainty of this assumption is almost disturbing.

“For someone who looks like nothing, you’ve got quite a bit to hide.”

Neil freezes. Andrew’s expression doesn’t shift, but the way he tips his chin forward turns his face into a mask of shadow.

Too late, he remembers to relax again. “What?”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Andrew says. “You know I know.”

Neil’s fingers bite into his palms. Right on cue he can hear his mother’s clamoring behind his ear; he feels the sharp bite of her knuckles biting into his back, his shoulders, his head. _Stupid_ , she hisses. _You’ve been around for hours and you’ve already made the worst mistake._

The papers behind the desk. He’d been so careful to tuck them in a good spot, sure that Matt wasn’t sharp enough to find what wasn’t in plain sight. The invisible divide between the team told him that the nosiest people wouldn’t be let into the apartment, much less the bedroom. He’d thought he had it all figured out, but there was a crucial flaw in his plans.

Neil had planned for someone coming through the doors; he hadn’t planned for shadows slipping through the ceiling. The irritation at being so short-sighted burns in his throat like acid.

“Is this how you greet new people?” he says. “No wonder nobody’s joined your team.”

“Rich words from a nobody,” Andrew says.

“Mind your own business.” Neil’s scowling without even meaning to. “Stay out of my things, or—”

“Or _what?_ _"_  Teeth gleam; the knives under flesh threaten to tear. “Relax. I’m not sharing the news.” An unspoken _yet_ lingers between them.

Neil hates how easy he can feel himself becoming untethered. The threads of his calmness—a blanket of collectedness that he’s gathered in the wake of his mother’s absence—are fraying too quickly under those brown eyes, that razor-sharp gleam of teeth. He has to remind himself to stay still, to take a deep breath and count to ten in a handful of languages, before he can speak steadily again.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.” Andrew cocks his head to one side. “You’re just interesting is all. How does someone like _you_ end up here, in the middle of nowhere?” He leans in almost imperceptibly. “What are you running from?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Neil says.

Andrew shrugs. “Then don’t. It doesn’t matter to me either way.” The edge of his smile threatens to cut his cheeks wide open. “I needed a new toy to play with. Thank you for showing up.”  
  
Neil scowls. “I’m not a toy.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

Andrew takes three steps closer. For a moment Neil thinks he’s going to cross the distance and—do what? Neil doesn’t know, but the violence is there, written underneath the surface.

But then Andrew is kneeling to pull open a skylight, picking open a latch that shouldn’t open from the outside. He teeters at the edge, thigh muscles bunching as he prepares to jump in, and gives Neil one last cursory glance. Two fingers come up to his temple in a mock-salute.

He jumps in and takes the embers with him. Then, it’s just Neil and the stars.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this may or may not have a sequel?
> 
> leave a comment below or come say hi on [tumblr](http://poetatertot.tumblr.com/)


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